


when death is your wingman

by kalypsobean



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Character Study, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not that guy, the one who goes into his psych eval and cries and gets discharged with a medal and a pension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when death is your wingman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecarlysutra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/gifts).



He can barely remember what it was like to be young. He knows the words for how he used to be: resilient, arrogant, confident. 

He certainly isn't that any more, even though they all said he was the best, it wouldn't happen to him.

 

He's not sure anyone can tell the difference; after all, everyone around him has seen men die and said goodbye to people they've never seen again. They should be as changed as he is; though he knows that they're not. He knows it because he goes to work alongside them every damn day and he knows that they still believe; he knows how to wear a mask well enough that he can see the lines around people's faces when they say they're fine, if anyone bothered to ask. He knows what damage looks like, after all - he learnt that at Top Gun.

 

It's different when you don't know the men inside of the MiGs; when they are faceless and come from nowhere to sit on your ass until you spin and start leading them away from where you don't want them to be, with your thumb half over the weapons controls in case the order comes to arm and lock, and then to fire. The only thing that kept his hands from shaking was his training, the way his mind went blank and calm even though he could feel his heart beating at a speed that shouldn't have been possible. He remembers thinking that it would be so easy and yet the order never came, not for him, not then. 

He remembers hearing that someone had crashed, and connecting it with the spiral of smoke and flame that had registered in his peripheral vision as a threat to visibility. He remembers the cold, clammy feeling in his head and barely avoiding throwing up on the tarmac.

It's a vivid memory because it's one of the things he dreams about, one of the memories that wakes him up and leaves him sweating on the couch in his living room. It's one of the things that doesn't go away.

 

~*~

 

He goes to work at base five days a week and cops duty one weekend a month; he pretends that he doesn't get the chills every time one of his students gets close to him, or go hot and cold every time his computer signals a lock and successful hit. It's so easy to just go along and say the right things, smile at the right times, and pass as well-adjusted, when he knows he's anything but. He relies on his team and the manual and sometimes, he swears, he only gets through the day because he's memorised and practised each move and counter a thousand times; he's his own autopilot.

He's grateful for the days when he doesn't have to fly, because he always feels a little less sick when he has both feet on solid ground and the air doesn't slice around him at two times the speed of sound. 

 

He doesn't know what to tell them when they ask what it's like to fly in a real war. They want to go, and he wants to find a way to kick every one of them out of the program. 

He doesn't recognise himself, sometimes.

He's rehearsed a whole speech in his head - he tells them what it's like to be so careful of sightlines and NOE that flying at recovery altitude feels alien and all the exhilaration is gone because there's no room for it between listening for orders and watching radar and the skies all at once. There's a strange disconnect that comes from realising that you've already dipped the nose, lowered a wing and deployed the spoiler when you're coming into a slip; he hates that one, feeling like he's outside of himself and watching someone else moving in his body.

He wants to tell them but every time he says the right things, the same things his instructors said to him, and he goes home to his bottle and pours three fingers and tells himself it's the last time.

He wants to tell them nobody's immune to this thing that's draining him from the inside.

 

~*~

 

He was stationed in Japan, for a while, not that his time there ever lasted long. He only came here when there was nowhere else to go; they don't even fly the planes he trained on any more. He's good enough with the Hornets for training, and it's easy enough to retain command proficiency now that simulator time is mandatory, but he can't say with any degree of certainty that he won't be asked to go back out there.

He's already turned them down once; his career could end here, but he'd never get more than a minimum payrise, never again fly one of those perfect, quiet patrols where there are no bogeys and it's just him and the sky and he remembers why he went through all that to get to where he was before things went to shit.

 

It's worse, now, somehow, than it was. There was a round of drunken phone calls, last year, and everything he thought he'd dealt with decided to twist around his gut and drag him back under. Even Maverick decided to call him, and all he could think of during that conversation, for all two minutes, was that maybe Maverick would have done something differently, something reckless, and then they'd have all come home.

He doesn't think it would have changed anything.

 

He's not that guy, the one who breaks and runs around without his pants or loses himself in drink or thinks he's still back there, combat-ready and permanently enthusiastic and inexperienced. He's not the guy who walks into his psych eval and cries, ends up discharged with a medal and pension, kicked out into a world that doesn't know cut him slack when it's just a bad day after a rough night, just need to sleep a bit longer to make up for it, and nobody's around to look at him, maybe look past the lines around his face on the days he's sure his mask is going to slip and all that will change.


End file.
